


Sex Addiction: An Argument From Aetiology

by halotolerant



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Backstory, Gender Issues, Genderplay, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-05
Updated: 2010-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-11 12:16:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An explanation for Jack. I call this my slash!het piece.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sex Addiction: An Argument From Aetiology

During the period of time that he was called Jack Harkness, he was told by many – by one night stands, boyfriends, girlfriends, friends, psychiatrists, Doctors – that he was addicted to sex.

 

The evidence for this proposition was certainly of some weight.

 

Whatever the truth may have been – and who can know the truth of their own motivations? – Jack himself answered all of them with the assertion that what he craved was affection. It was not that he said this – saying so would materially decrease the likelihood that any given questioner might sleep with him – but he felt it each time.

 

It may also be reasonably suggested that their various convictions that he was pathologically fond of physical union stemmed not a little from their amazement that he could find so many and so varied others attractive. It outraged taboo, propriety, religion – for any given act, a religion could be found to disapprove of it, even celibacy.

 

Humans are not, as a rule, omnisexual. Unlike their close relations the bonobo chimp (rescued from near-extinction on Terra in 2123 and current occupiers of the moon Triton, renowned for its hanging gardens and public healthcare system), they have generally failed to recognise the vast increase in social cohesion that corresponds to a universal bisexuality, let alone a more complex orientation.

 

Jack, then, requires an explanation. And it is not that he was designed to be so, or that he could never have been another way. It is that he was caused to be.

 

He was not, of course, 'Jack' at the relevant point in his life. He was 'Tau'.

 

The Time Agent Academy had…opinions, about first names.

 

Opinions, in fact, were something the Time Agent Academy had in abundance, and since the inception for the novitiate was at the age of three, these opinions mattered rather more to the lives of those under its aegis than is normally seen in such institutions.

 

The rules about genders, for example. It was – and had been since 4690 – the Academy's policy to keep the male and female students entirely separated until entering their final year, at age 18. And not merely separate, but oblivious to the existence of the other. The inevitable consequences of such a strategy had been weighed and it had been agreed – and tended to still be agreed, by graduates – that the benefits of keeping anyone from unexpected pregnancy, coupled with the definite advantages of allowing males and females to work out their first fumblings on those like them, rather than the alien territory of the other, justified every problem it might cause otherwise.

 

Odder policies have undoubtedly been applied to educational premises in their time.

 

Jack could not, therefore, even later laugh at himself for what happened. It could have happened to anyone in such circumstances, and may have often done both before and after, for all anyone can say.

 

What happened to Jack, to be precise, was a fellow-student called – at least at that point – Mu.

 

Mu lived with the males. At three he had been put with the males and there he stayed. Except that to themselves they were not 'males', they were people. They were each roughly the same in appearance and as their time at the Academy progressed, each changed in roughly the same time. Mu did not. He grew no beard, his voice would not break and his torso lacked definition. He took to wearing billowing clothing to hide these imperfections, and gradually – in the filter-feeding manner of all institutional gossip – Jack was to learn that Mu was being rather horribly bullied about it all.

 

He heard the information whilst sitting in the Refectory. Psi – his current paramour – was sitting in his lap, complaining about some issue relating to food allocation. Rho, who bore the news, looked at Jack in surprise.

 

"You mean to say you haven't noticed? What have you been doing all this time?"

 

Jack took a self-conscious look at Psi. Jack had been a late-bloomer, sexually ignored, more or less, until he was 16 and finally gained that certain something. It had left him somewhat lacking in confidence.

 

When, now, he looked over to where Mu sat, alone, he felt a pang of sympathy and a sensation that he was facing a choice that would define how he felt about his own character for quite some time.

 

Some boys approached Mu, already mockingly stroking their own inadequately covered chins and laughing. Mu stood up, defiant in posture, and they pointed at his voluminous shirt and started tugging at it, one holding back his arms to prevent a strong-looking right-hook ever getting delivered.

 

And so Jack made a choice. He would never realise until later – much later – and over three thousand years earlier, when he was granted the time to think about many things – that this choice would buoy him up for decades, that the little piece of self-worth it sowed would shelter him in one of the harshest abandonments a man can face.

 

But that is later, and earlier.

 

That day he vested himself of Psi's still-complaining form, went up to the table where Mu sat and, clenching his fists to hide that they trembled, stood shoulder to shoulder with him.

 

From that day to the beginning of their intimacy together could be a story quite in its own right. One could article the conversations and the jokes, the shared walks, the assistance in classes, the arguments over nothing that were reconciled first with tears, then hugs, then furtive touches and one could note how one instructor (himself ignorant, as all were, that humans were not created equal) remarked that Tau was most improved thanks to association with the Mu boy.

 

One day perhaps, that story will be told. In essence, however, within six months of first meeting, they were corralled in Jack's study kissing more deeply than on the three previous occasions, and a sense of deliciously urgency was starting to pervade proceedings.

 

Jack had been with five boys so far. This was, by Academy standards, perhaps only a little under average, his good looks and natural charm having made up for what his confidence lacked. He knew he liked it – and not all the boys did – and he knew that he hungered not only to share the depths of Mu's soul (that, yes, of course, of course he did, but he was a boy and sixteen) but to touch those parts of Mu most desirable to him.

 

In his mind as well, was some half-formed idea that Mu's lack of obvious development was due to not being drawn-out. That with sufficient attention on his part, Mu would shed a skin and grow as he should, and be as beautiful in the eyes of others as he had long been to Jack.

 

With shaking hands – and he was not normally so nervous, this was different - Jack took off his own simple tunic and looked to Mu, who now looked with intense concentration at the floor.

 

"Mu, dearest Mu" Jack said, softly, "I know you are not like the others. I love that about you. Mu? I love it." He sidled up near to his best friend and took the smooth, soft chin in his hand.

 

"But I…I am more than just…unlike, Tau. I am…deformed. There is no other word for it." Mu broke his head free and looked at the wall.

 

With the utmost tenderness, Jack moved to lift Mu's tunic top, starting to be a little afraid but determined not for one minute to show it. As he revealed the skin beneath he wondered at Mu's worries. To be sure, Mu had an odd combination of features, for whilst not fat he had the swollen hillocks under the nipple one associated with rotund boys, and was somehow differently proportioned around the hip than Jack had experience of. What did this matter, however? Or rather, what should it matter?

 

Jack did not quite like to touch him on the nipple as he would any other at this point, fearing the sensation of softness yielding under his touch like dough or clay. But he knew nothing would move matters on so quickly, and so reached fingertips to the unusually large areoles.

 

Efficacious it most certainly was. With a low, grateful moan, Mu moved closer to Jack, and tried to repeat the action upon him, which was perfectly agreeable and continued some minutes. Jack – as was his habit – applied next his mouth and was surprised how well it answered with more loose flesh to suckle upon. Mu started shifting his hips, frantically attempting to gain a purchase around Jack's thigh, and Jack resigned himself to a first night of simple pleasures.

 

It was only after some while of kissing each other in every place they could think of that their trousers did not still cover – and necks and ears and palms, it seemed, were quite worthy of some attention – that Jack began to realise that Mu, for all his apparent enthusiasm, had no evident arousal.

 

"How can you hold back? I am hard as a Regthlon tooth" Jack whispered, half-joking, and moved his hand boldly to Mu's crotch, intending to grasp the offending article.

 

Mu squeaked, moaned, moved forward but then away and brought up his knees, crossing his legs defensively.

 

"Mu!" Jack cried. It was quite, quite horrible. He felt as though he had been unexpectedly ducked in the lake, as though he had stepped backwards off a high ledge. "Mu! If I have been imposing…if I have made you…" he clamped the heel of his hand to one eye, shocked at his own sensibility.

 

"No, you fool" Mu replied, with deep tenderness underscoring a choked voice. "No, Tau" he said again, and put his head in his hands: "This is all still my fault, I am afraid. I do not…I am not whole…down there."

 

"An injury?" Jack asked softly, feeling instant outrage to one who would…

 

"I can only imagine so" Mu replied mournfully. "I have no…my manhood is most diminished and as for my…I think they must have cut me open, taken something and never sewn me up again, for I have…" and he started trying not to cry, words spilling up to the edge of his mouth even as tears threatened to spill out of his eyes.

 

Jack moved closer again and for a long while held him in silence. Jack had a gift that he would never quite understand for making people feel better about themselves simply by his loving them. In years to come it would be buffeted and almost broken, and there would come a time when he would almost entirely abandon it, sickened by the endless replacements, by the brief shadowiness of love, by love itself.

 

And then a man would come into his life who did not want to be healed, and Jack would…

 

But once again we get ahead of ourselves. On this day Jack was very young and ripe and tender as the pale corn, and when some time had passed he said: "I am not afraid, Mu. Let me. Let me. If you want my touch then I wish to give it."

 

He was young enough, you see, to believe this when he said it.

 

With a sigh that was not of arousal, Mu came back towards the soft deep rug they had been upon earlier, and lifted his hips to remove his trousers, leaving only the wide uniform underwear. The truth of his earlier revelation was now quite evident – the shorts clung tight to a groin without contours.

 

Half-proud and half-embarrassed, Jack stripped naked. His erection had flagged a little, but the sight of Mu as he at last slowly, cautiously, removed his shorts brought him to full life once more. He noticed with a thrill that Mu was sneaking glances at him, at his cock growing darker and straighter, and biting his lip at the sight.

 

Jack came to kneel between Mu's thighs, and kissed him long and deep, until he felt the tiny increments of his involuntary hip movement again. Only then did he lean back, spread Mu's legs a little wider, and look at him.

 

There was a cock, without a doubt, though too small to even be comical in its size, and almost covered in a hood of skin above it. There was no obvious opening in it, and the small orifice of the urethra was in fact visible beneath it. This though, was information Jack scarcely took in at that moment, overpowered as he was by the sight of the gaping wound where the testicles should have rested. It was not – he checked this – the anal orifice, for that rested behind in perfect normalcy.

 

Mu's face was flushed when Jack looked up. He looked quite petrified.

 

"You are beautiful, Mu, my poor Mu" Jack said, meaning it, "I am only sorry that you have been left bereft, for there are many things one may give to…I hope I may still please you, in some way, as you please me."

 

Mu nodded a little breathlessly: "There is quite some…sensation" he said. "I have, that is to say…"

 

"We all have tried that!" Jack said, and laughed, and all of a sudden they were equal and the situation was easy, and the part of them that was best friends not strangers reappeared.

 

"Proceed with me" Mu said, "as you would with anyone. I beg you."

 

"As you say" Jack replied, happily, and moved his mouth between Mu's legs, certain that a tongue could only ever be welcome to a cock of any size.

 

Mu certainly seemed to believe so. He did not – perhaps it was not having the right orifices, Jack was unsure – he did not come to completion and spill himself, not as Jack knew it, but he made enough noise to wake the dead and, after one particular yell, moved to push Jack away saying "I am complete, I am complete, oh how I love you."

 

And Mu moved his own soft – so soft – mouth to Jack's more substantial manhood. It was hesitant and slow and wonderful, and Jack for his part felt that nothing could ever replace the joy he was experiencing right then.

 

At this point, we must remember, he was sixteen.

 

They fell asleep together cramped into Jack's bed, and in the morning took the first steps of the more complicated experiment of finding conversation with someone as they come out of sleep. It may be said they did tolerably well, and argued only once and that over the remains of the marmalade.

 

Again, a period of some weeks passed. They were caught in a golden cloud of affection, and when the time presented itself they became past masters at the pleasures of mouth and hands, Jack discovering to his delight that whilst Mu might never quite properly orgasm he seemed to make up for this defect by a capacity to be brought to his peak over and over again, until his eyes rolled back and he was left unable to find the energy to close his legs.

 

Mu also allowed Jack to penetrate him, as Jack had four of the five other boys of his intimate acquaintance. This was delightful to Jack as it ever had been, Mu seeming in no sense altered in this region, from the puckered entrance to the rugged heat inside, but Mu himself undoubtedly gained less from the procedure than the others Jack knew. Jack spent quite some time with fingers crooked beckoning out the lump that could entertain quite so ticklishly, but it never revealed itself and whilst Mu obliged and gladly, Jack could not help feeling he was missing something.

 

Gradually, the wound began to fascinate him.

 

Whenever Jack stroked Mu's miniscule cock, the wound would move, the entry opening wider and some clear fluid weeping from it. This embarrassed Mu most intensely ("It bleeds, sometimes" he said, when they had been close some weeks, "and it will do soon again, I dare say. I do not like it.")

 

Once, as Jack licked the other boy with gentle precision, he let his tongue come down half-accidentally and circle the wound as he sometimes did the anal opening. Mu objected to the loss of direct stimulation and he did not repeat the experiment, but the scent stayed with him and would assault his memory in the most inopportune times.

 

It would be worth mentioning, at this juncture, the reactions of the other students to the relationship. For many the doings of two not particularly well-known or well-beloved juniors were unimportant. For some, however, the denigration of Jack (or of Tau, as they thought of him) who had been so poised for success, by association with such a misfit as Mu, gave them a sense of entitled anger, which they would vent on Mu when he could be found apart from Jack. Mu himself remained deeply conscious of his physical disabilities, and still would not shower or change with the other boys. He knew, as Jack did not, that rumours of these disabilities – rumours far in excess of anything even biologically possible – continued to spread, and that so by association rumours of what perversions Jack might have were beginning to spring up, though often quashed by those still loyal to him.

 

These loyalists, however, hated Mu almost unequivocally. Whether this was motivated more by envy or fear it would be hard to say, but Jack became aware that he was again being forced to make a choice.

 

This choice, however, was simple. Jack was in love. Madly and truly and for the first time.

 

And Mu…Mu had beauties the other boys could only guess at. If Mu was a mistake then there should be more of them – that was Jack's opinion.

 

In the fifth week of their time together was the time that it happened. Jack, having been relaxed by Mu's hands fast and hot upon him almost before they had shut the door, was rubbing at the small mound of flesh with deliberate slowness and without much pressure, pausing at intervals to blow across it and watching in delight as the whole red diamond of Mu's groin flexed and contracted at the process.

 

"Mu?" Jack asked, gently, "Tell me what you want, right now."

 

"I'm fine, oh, Tau, oh I'm…I'm fine just now, I'm fine." A drop of sweat rolled down Mu's nose, catching on the indentation of his top lip and his mouth fell wide open, desperately trying to breath.

 

"Mu. Tell me what you want Right. Now." And Jack blew over the wound.

 

Mu grimaced, eyes rolling up in his head: "Ungh. Oh you bastard – inside it, does that make you happy? I want you to put yourself inside it, right inside the fucking hole!"

 

"Oh!" Jack cursed, stabbing at his cock, only just holding himself in check from ending there and then, because… and he sighed and cursed again, soft and long and gratefully, and felt himself harden even more at the thought. Perhaps it was a perversion to want it, but it was a part of Mu, just like any other. How could there be moral and immoral ways to penetrate someone, when the act was in essence the same?

 

He took himself in hand, shivering, and guided his cock to the wound, thinking to rub the head in a little of the fluid gathered just outside the entrance. Mu hissed, and Jack had to grit his teeth and wait, quite still, before he could continue. It was warm, radiating a moist heat before he even touched himself to it.

 

Entering was not as easy as he had anticipated. He rubbed at Mu's little cock with one hand, remembering how the wound would flare and gape at the touch. More fluid appeared, and he mentioned something about not needing the viscous jelly they used for normal penetration. Mu only mumbled some nonsense and spread his legs wider, seemingly eager to be entered.

 

"You've been wanting this a while" Jack said, astonished and aroused at the understanding.

 

"You think…I've managed…to live sixteen years and never…try it for myself?" Mu managed, and Jack again almost lost himself at that moment, with all still to be gained. His own cock was leaking, and copiously.

 

With incremental gains, Jack slowly slid himself into Mu's wound. It was incredible. It felt like silk, but hot, hotter than an oven and dripping wet with a delicious moist slipperiness even better than a mouth. And now, as Jack still rubbed at him, the passage constricted tight with every one of Mu's moans, sending thrills up Jack's spine and right down to the soles of his feet.

 

It was wrong and perverted and the most erotic thing in the whole world.

 

Jack began to thrust with growing enthusiasm, relishing the ease of passage, seeing stars in the edges of his eyes. Mu, for his part, tilted his hips, altering the angle and whimpering on each upstroke almost as if it pained him. They kissed, joined in two places and for a moment quite perfectly happy.

 

This was the first time. There would be three more, before it ended.

 

\- - -

 

Nature has an inexorable way of taking its course.

 

\- - -

 

It should have been a relief that, after all, Mu was not dying. That it was not a tumour.

 

It should have come as a pleasant and exciting piece of information to both of them that humanity came in two varieties.

 

Mu should, perhaps, have been glad to be upgraded from deformed male to perfectly functioning female.

 

But in the end, neither wanted the baby, and having been dragged in front of every disciplinary committee the Academy had – not, it must be understood, as defendants, but as witnesses against the Professors who had failed to detect Mu's mis-categorization – they had grown weary.

 

They felt – and for the first time – oddly dirty.

 

Mu left and went to live in a Nunnery for a while, completely overwhelmed by the concept of her gender. She presumably gave birth there – certainly a child entered a nearby town's Orphanage at the appropriate time. Jack never met it, but would never, for the rest of his long life, ever enter a relationship with someone precisely sixteen years his junior, though he would talk to them long.

 

Everyone and everything else would, for him, always be permissible. Having with Mu broken every rule he could think of, only to find that the acts were considered beyond normal by many, he would never again be convinced by any moral argument for sexual prudishness.

 

Little is known of Mu's later life. She and Jack would meet each other again only once, by accident, at a chateau in France of the 1790's. He would be with two companions and she would be pregnant again, possibly with their own child – timelines were so untrustworthy. They would pretend not to recognise each other.

 

Returning to the time of their first parting, however, Jack threw himself into his studies and became top of his class and, concurrently developing an air of wounded mystique besides his ripening physical attributes, soon attained the sexual status he would later be famous for.

 

In his life he would fall in love another twenty-seven times, including twice with the same person. He would have physical congress at an average of once every three Terran days, although this is merely an average and takes into account the times in the fleshpots of New Mars as well as the barren years after the Second Great Time War.

 

Did he ever find what he needed? That will depend on what you think that it was.

 

I have spoken only of beginnings, and of them, only of the one that came first.


End file.
